The eye-level camera can see what you are looking at. Then the store can use that information to change window displays, store layouts and promotions to encourage sales, according to published accounts.

It doesn't make it any less disturbing that only one eye of the polyethylene humanoids has a camera.

It's part of an alarming trend.

Police recently investigated a man they suspected of — imagine this! — feeding wild cats in a small Kansas town, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

So cops planted a surveillance camera in a tree and pointed it at the duplex he lived in. The camera just happened to be focused on his adult daughter's bedroom.

The camera was eventually removed once the homeowner discovered it, yet police refused to admit it was wrong in the first place.

Some New Jersey police can use high-tech cameras, infrared technology and automatic license plate readers to surveil its communities, courtesy of a federal anti-terror program. Yet the police aren't limited to using the equipment for homeland security investigations.

We are not just at the mercy of technology, but of the judgment of those who use it.

That's the real danger.

Some local law enforcement agencies use drones. GPS technology embedded in cell phones can track you and airport body scanners can detect contraband, weapons and our private parts.

You can see the potentials for privacy abuse.

Facial recognition software can scour social media like Facebook, leading to your identity.

Getting creeped out yet?

I like my privacy. I don't want some drone snapping pictures of me while I take a shower.

If the head of the world's largest spy agency couldn't keep his emails secret, how can we? Notice I've referred to "privacy," not "privacy rights." Neither the U.S. Constitution nor the Bill of Rights addresses personal privacy outside the home except for some very specific circumstances.

It's only a matter of time before someone plants a microphone in the mannequin's ear as you plot your shoplifting caper — or your discreet relationship with the head of the CIA.

We are in a period of rapid technological growth that requires we exercise commensurate judgment.

Let's just hope that dummy that's watching you isn't, like the Kansas police, of the human kind.